My aim is to offer insights into some of the more subtle principles underpinning prints. The commentary is based on thirty-eight years of teaching and the prints and other collectables that I am focusing on are those which I have acquired over the years.
In the galleries of prints (accessed by clicking the links immediately below) I am also adding fresh images offered for sale. If you get lost in the maze of links, simply click the "home" button to return to the blog discussions.

Engraving on laid paper trimmed close to the image borderline with
thread margins and lined onto a conservator’s support sheet.

Size: (sheet) 26.2 x 18.9 cm

Condition: crisp impression trimmed to thread margins around the
image borderline. The sheet is in good condition (i.e. there are no significant
stains, tears, holes, folds, abrasions or foxing) and it has been laid upon a
conservator’s support sheet.

I am selling this beautifully executed engraving of Michelangelo’s
masterpiece for AU$370 (currently US$293.07/EUR247.68/GBP224.07 at the time of
this listing) including postage and handling to anywhere in the world.

If you are interested in purchasing this engraved translation of Michelangelo’s
famous fresco executed only 35 years after Michelangelo finished work on the
painting, please contact me (oz_jim@printsandprinciples.com) and I will send
you a PayPal invoice to make the payment easy.

This is the third reproductive version of Michelangelo’s famous
fresco that I have listed and it is probably the most sensitively executed of
all the prints.

What may be slightly baffling are the discrepancies in these
copies of the same painting and this leads me to point out that there would be
very few—if any—early printmakers who physically sat in front of the paintings
and sculptures that they reproduced. Instead, the practice at the time was to
rely on drawings upon which they modelled their prints. As can be imagined, a
mixture of inaccuracies in the drawn copy and the creative needs of printmakers
to “fix” perceived weaknesses in the artwork reproduced
can lead to significant alterations should a copy be based on another copy that
was based on a drawing. Certainly this is the case with this print as it is a
copy of Martino Rota’s reproductive print which in turn was a copy of an
anonymous artist’s print. Going further, this print may also be a copy of a
copy of Rota’s print as FAMSF holds another version of this same image
published by Nelli, but in reverse. My mind boggles with the little changes
that inevitably occur with all this copying.